Thursday, July 24, 2014

Back in the day, the Cincinnati Life Insurance Company sold Long Term Care insurance (LTCi), and a colleague (since retired) sold a number of these. Recently, a Cincinnati LTCi client called to complain about a claims problem, and I was happy to try to help out.

Note: I had understood (mistakenly, as it turned out), that Cincinnati had actually sold its block of business to another carrier. This is a not-infrequent occurrence in the LTCi biz, but was not the case here. Instead, they had turned over policy service to a Third Party Administrator, LTCG, which also services other carriers' policies, including CNA. Unfortunately, I hadn't known this.

I invited the client to come into the office so that we could call in to try to resolve the problem. This turned into a roughly 90 minute call, during which time I know that I heard the rep with whom we were speaking say "CNA." I made a note of that, and made the assumption that Cincinnati had sold their policies to them. Later, I figured out that she had simply misspoken.

We were unable to get resolution to the problem, and so I reached out to CNA's media relations folks to let them know that I would be posting an unflattering review of the situation. I was contacted almost immediately by the very nice, professional Jennifer, who offered to reach out to their claims folks to see what could be done.

I was also contacted by a gentleman named Terry, who works for LTCG (the policy administrators). He had done some research, and was convinced that this was not a CNA policy at all. Since my mind was already made up, and Jennifer had already taken ownership, I paid that little heed.

This was a mistake.

Behind the scenes, Jennifer connected with a supervisor in the CNA claims department, and they were able to ascertain not only that this was not a CNA policy, but in fact a Cincinnati one. And that would have been enough: they could have just stopped right there and told me to take it up with Cincinnati and LTCG.

But they did not:

Instead of simply shrugging it off and passing it back to me, they reached out to the Cincinnati folks on behalf of this client - not CNA's - and helped to resolve the issues. Late yesterday afternoon, I received a text from the client that Cincinnati (well, LTCG) had reached out to her, and that they had everything necessary to approve the claim.

I was, and am, stunned.

CNA was under zero obligation to do anything more than confirm that this wasn't their policyholder. And yet they went out of their way to help her get a claim issue resolved. That is world class service, and I am absolutely grateful to Jennifer at CNA and Terry at LTCG for their help, patience and perseverance in getting us to this point.

Back in the day, the Cincinnati Life Insurance Company sold Long Term Care insurance (LTCi), and a colleague (since retired) sold a number of these. Recently, a Cincinnati LTCi client called to complain about a claims problem, and I was happy to try to help out.

Note: I had understood (mistakenly, as it turned out), that Cincinnati had actually sold its block of business to another carrier. This is a not-infrequent occurrence in the LTCi biz, but was not the case here. Instead, they had turned over policy service to a Third Party Administrator, LTCG, which also services other carriers' policies, including CNA. Unfortunately, I hadn't known this.

I invited the client to come into the office so that we could call in to try to resolve the problem. This turned into a roughly 90 minute call, during which time I know that I heard the rep with whom we were speaking say "CNA." I made a note of that, and made the assumption that Cincinnati had sold their policies to them. Later, I figured out that she had simply misspoken.

We were unable to get resolution to the problem, and so I reached out to CNA's media relations folks to let them know that I would be posting an unflattering review of the situation. I was contacted almost immediately by the very nice, professional Jennifer, who offered to reach out to their claims folks to see what could be done.

I was also contacted by a gentleman named Terry, who works for LTCG (the policy administrators). He had done some research, and was convinced that this was not a CNA policy at all. Since my mind was already made up, and Jennifer had already taken ownership, I paid that little heed.

This was a mistake.

Behind the scenes, Jennifer connected with a supervisor in the CNA claims department, and they were able to ascertain not only that this was not a CNA policy, but in fact a Cincinnati one. And that would have been enough: they could have just stopped right there and told me to take it up with Cincinnati and LTCG.

But they did not:

Instead of simply shrugging it off and passing it back to me, they reached out to the Cincinnati folks on behalf of this client - not CNA's - and helped to resolve the issues. Late yesterday afternoon, I received a text from the client that Cincinnati (well, LTCG) had reached out to her, and that they had everything necessary to approve the claim.

I was, and am, stunned.

CNA was under zero obligation to do anything more than confirm that this wasn't their policyholder. And yet they went out of their way to help her get a claim issue resolved. That is world class service, and I am absolutely grateful to Jennifer at CNA and Terry at LTCG for their help, patience and perseverance in getting us to this point.